COURSE REQUIREMENTS

There are no formal prerequisites for this certification. However, candidates must complete the following steps to learn and maintain the CompTIA Security+ certificate:

• Pass the CompTIA Security+ certification examination1
• Earn the certification upon successful completion of the exam22;
• Maintain the certification through CompTIA’s Continuing Education (CE) Program;
• Complete 50 Continuing Education (CEUs) within each three-year renewal cycle; and
• Submit CEUs and applicable renewal fees through the CompTIA portal before the certification expiration date.   

1 – Current exam: SY0-701

2 – No separate application process is required.

Note: While not required, CompTIA recommends that candidates have Network+ (or equivalent knowledge) and approximately two years of experience in IT administration with a security focus.

COURSE SYLLABUS

General security concepts (12%) 

• Security controls: comparing technical, preventive, managerial, deterrent, operational, detective, physical, corrective, compensating, and directive controls. 
•  undamental concepts: summarizing confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA); non-repudiation; authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA); zero trust; and deception/disruption technology. 
• Change management: explaining business processes, technical implications, documentation, and version control. 
•  Cryptographic solutions: using public key infrastructure (PKI), encryption, obfuscation, hashing, digital signatures, and blockchain. 

Threats, vulnerabilities, and mitigations (22%):

•  Threat actors and motivations: comparing nation-states, unskilled attackers, hacktivists, insider threats, organized crime, shadow IT, and motivations like data exfiltration, espionage, and financial gain.
• Threat vectors and attack surfaces: explaining message-based, unsecure networks, social engineering, file-based, voice call, supply chain, and vulnerable software vectors.
• Vulnerabilities: explaining application, hardware, mobile device, virtualization, operating system (OS)-based, cloud-specific, web-based, and supply chain vulnerabilities.
• Malicious activity: analyzing malware attacks, password attacks, application attacks, physical attacks, network attacks, and cryptographic attacks.
• Mitigation techniques: using segmentation, access control, configuration enforcement, hardening, isolation, and patching.

Security architecture (18%):

• Architecture models: comparing on-premises, cloud, virtualization, Internet of Things (IoT), industrial control systems (ICS), and infrastructure as code (IaC).
• Enterprise infrastructure: applying security principles to infrastructure considerations, control selection, and secure communication/access. Data protection: comparing data types, securing methods, general considerations, and classifications.
• Resilience and recovery: explaining high availability, site considerations, testing, power, platform diversity, backups, and continuity of operations.

Security operations (28%):

• Computing resources: applying secure baselines, mobile solutions, hardening, wireless security, application security, sandboxing, and monitoring.
• Asset management: explaining acquisition, disposal, assignment, and monitoring/tracking of hardware, software, and data assets.
• Vulnerability management: identifying, analyzing, remediating, validating, and reporting vulnerabilities.
• Alerting and monitoring: explaining monitoring tools and computing resource activities.
• Enterprise security: modifying firewalls, IDS/IPS, DNS filtering, DLP (data loss prevention), NAC (network access control), and EDR/XDR (endpoint/extended detection and response).
• Identity and access management: implementing provisioning, SSO (single sign-on), MFA (multifactor authentication), and privileged access tools.
• Automation and orchestration: explaining automation use cases, scripting benefits, and considerations.
• Incident response: implementing processes, training, testing, root cause analysis, threat hunting, and digital forensics.
• Data sources: using log data and other sources to support investigations.

Security program management and oversight (20%):

• Security governance: summarizing guidelines, policies, standards, procedures, external considerations, monitoring, governance structures, and roles/responsibilities.
• Risk management: explaining risk identification, assessment, analysis, register, tolerance, appetite, strategies, reporting, and business impact analysis (BIA).
• Third-party risk: managing vendor assessment, selection, agreements, monitoring, questionnaires, and rules of engagement.
• Security compliance: summarizing compliance reporting, consequences of non-compliance, monitoring, and privacy.
• Audits and assessments: explaining attestation, internal/external audits, and penetration testing.
• Security awareness: implementing phishing training, anomalous behavior recognition, user guidance, reporting, and monitoring.